


to render one transparent

by lavitanuova



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Get In Losers We're Projecting, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Noncanonical Character Death, Other, Parent Valjean, Post-Barricade, Suicide, Éponine Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:14:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22695379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavitanuova/pseuds/lavitanuova
Summary: God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent.==The self-indulgent Eponine Survives AU that nobody but myself needed; featuring a queer teen and her dumb best friend, really bad dialogue, melodrama, bisexuals, ghosts, and bisexual ghosts.
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent/Éponine Thénardier, Marius Pontmercy & Éponine Thénardier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

A musket. A shock. A flash of light. 

Someone topples. 

Eponine sees it from across the street, in thick and clouding rain under cover of night, but she knows the boy who fell. 

Marius. 

She scrambles through the barricade, pushing past scores of men in tattered waistcoats and jackets. Her words escape her mouth like bullets, frantically ordering everyone to let her through. There is nothing more terrifying in the world than a girl gone half-insane with sorrow, her mind only focused on her panic and her pain. The crowd parts like the red sea to let the hurricane through. 

Sliding down the stack of furniture, she falls to her knees at his side. They're in an alcove, on one side a wall and the other side the barricade. All she can hear is the sound of the rain striking the pavement and his soft, laboured breathing. The noise of the cannons and the muskets have all faded away. This is a deathbed, not a battlefield. He's slouched against a wall, doubled over, attempting to stem the blood with his hand. A dark stain spreads over his chest, his curls matted. His eyes seem distant, staring at something that Eponine cannot see.

She was meant to die before him, not watch him bleed out on the stones before her. Not like this. Not like this. Everything's all wrong. She did not plan to see his life pool beneath him, red as wine spilled in the inn that a young girl had to clean. 

Marius turns to her, finally noticing her presence. His brow creases with worry and he pushes himself up with a weak arm. "'Ponine?" In this light, the fading fire of the streetlights reflecting off the rain, he looks so young. They're both young, of course, both barely eighteen, but in death one reverts to the certain innocence of childhood, of purity and wonder, through the baptism of blood.

"You're hurt."

This statement strucks a chord in her, and she's not surprised to find it's one of guilt. She has done so many things unspoken. Her sins are unending, awful in their size and scale. If she were to confess them, it would take night after night. The tragedy is that he knows nothing of this. He still sees her as the Jondrette girl, an ugly girl with a hoarse voice, an osprey rather than the lark. He thinks nothing of her, but she thinks the world of him. 

And now her world is collapsing in on itself.

"You're dying. You can't die here." She moves to lift him, and he winces, and her hands shift cautiously away. Tears cut through the dirt on her cheeks, nearly washed away by the rain. "What about Cosette?"

His voice is almost resigned, and God, it makes her heart break. "I came here to die. Cosette's gone. There's nothing for me now." He breaks off into a gasping cough, and his eyes are focused on some point in the distance, between the mortar of the bricks in the wall. "No, no! She's not gone. I can hear her now. She's there. She's there. She came back for me, 'Ponine!" His smile has a sweet and grave air about it. "Do you see her? There, in the distance! She's so close, she's right there..." She has never known him to ramble, for that has always been more of her jurisdiction. But death strips all of us down to our core, and our core is quite often insane. 

"I can see her too," she assures Marius. This is no lie. If she squints, she can really see his lady's face, assembling her from pieces of snatched glances that float in her memory. Eponine has only seen her a few times before, and she did not even know her name. The name rings a bell, though, but this is no time to think of such trivial things. The mortar and bricks warp to form her, shaping the lace that wraps around her waist, the organic explosion of the flowers in her bonnet. Watching Cosette in the bricks, she realises there is still a sharp and violent hate twisted deep in her, all barbed wire and blood. She stole him, the hate hisses. But now the hate has no ground to stand on, and she watches as it cracks and withers, turning in on itself, turning on herself. 

His eyes close, and it shocks her for a second. He still sits upright, though, and his chest still rises and falls, though he must fight for breath. He has not much time left. She has to tell him the truth. It is, she thinks, the only good thing she has done in her life. "Cosette wrote you a letter," she says. At the mention of Cosette's name, colour seems to return to his face. She grasps for the letter in her pocket and unfolds it, the paper crinkling and soaked. The ink has smeared, but the elegant handwriting is still legible. "I didn't deliver it. It's still with me." As an afterthought, she adds "I'm sorry," and thrusts the letter towards him in an almost violent gesture. 

Marius shakes his head, grasping the letter with a shaky hand and reading it with a look of religious awe on his face, as though he has seen the face of God. Clutching the letter close, he covers it with kisses. She indulges him. One cannot refuse anything to a figure as pitiable as he is, especially not at this time, where the world finally takes its chance to revolve around the vulnerable man. "Oh, Cosette," she hears him whisper. "Cosette, Cosette." His eyes focus again on Eponine, and she notices that he looks so, so weak. The paper is bloodied and stained. He grasps her hand convulsively, blackness pouring from his lips and down his neck.

And all at once, he goes slack. He drops, slouches against the wall, eyelids closed as in sleep. His hand rests in hers, still and stiff, like the heavy arm of a doll. She has seen dead men in her life, but seeing his body makes her wish to claw her eyes out with her nails, let the kind and cooling dark overtake her. Yet, she stays fixed where she is, ignoring the commotion of the revolutionaries coming to take him away. To the pile, most likely. Just the thought of him piled limply with all the rest shoots her point-blank, his silence blossoming from her chest, an injury to match his.

But—at the moment she fancied him asleep forever, he speaks. It is a voice that has looked Death in the eye, a voice that sounds too old for his eighteen years. As she listens, another's speech seems to overlap his; that of a lady's, with kind and maternal care shining through every word.

"Tell Cosette I love her, and I'll see here when I will."

Marius tries to smile once more, and dies.

She regards his body with an odd sort of shock and detachment, blinking back tears that have somehow dried away. It has not quite sunk in for her yet, not even after that too-short sequence that seems so long ago, even though it was just a minute past. This was all part of the plan, she reminds herself. A slight deviation, yes. But she will die soon enough, and they will lay her body by his side and all will be well. Soon, she will fix this and right the world. She stumbles to her feet, taking care to not look at him, and slips into the commotion as easily as one would slip into a robe. She is a thief by nature, after all, and it is a habit for her to fade into the masses of Paris. Faces catch her eye, blinking by and flitting back into obscurity. A boy with curly hair and a cheerful face who cries with the force of a beast. Another, summer-haired, turning away. This is the first death of tonight, and it sets a morbid tone. 

She weaves through the throng of people and begins to climb the barricade, no one really noticing. She'll get shot up there for sure. As she climbs, hands calloused and sore, she thinks she'll look a sight in death. Eyelids puffy, face blotchy. Maybe, when they lay her in a row with all the others, they'll overlap her hand with his. It's the least that they could do. 

Hoisting herself over a table, she observes the revolutionaries. They are of all ages and appearances, most male, some female. Bustling away in waistcoats. Hauling weaponry and furniture. It looks smaller from up here. Is this how she will observe the world when she's dead? She scans the scene again, and her eyes fix on a boy, dark-skinned, whose clothes shout of a life on the street. He sings as he walks, carrying something heavy. Taking a moment to chatter with the men, Eponine finally sees his face. She knows it. She would know it anywhere.

She jumps down from the barricade, all thoughts of death forgotten.

She has a brother to save.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Valjean adopts 2 kids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can we just pretend that the other 2 thenardier kids don't exist thanks.

Jean Valjean looks down at the corpse of Marius Pontmercy.

He looks young in the starlight, but so do all the rest. None of them here could be more than twenty, perhaps twenty-five at a stretch. His thoughts turn to Cosette. He does not want to imagine his daughter's heartbreak, but it enters his mind unwillingly, this picture of her face falling when he arrives home with nothing except a body. He did not know this boy well, but he mourns for him, as for Cosette's happiness. The boy's—for he is a boy, still— fingers clutch a piece of paper, and Valjean reaches down and unfolds it.

The note is written in her handwriting, more suited for cheerful correspondence with her friends than to be stained with the blood of the revolution. "My dearest, alas! My father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England," it reads. 

He tucks the paper back in the boy's hands, and is about to lift him when something tugs at his feet. It is a small boy, dirty and ragged, hands coming up dark and bloodied. Valjean bends to ask him a question, but the child speaks quickly, voice hoarse from shouting or sobbing, but with the undertone of the cockiness of childhood. "My sister's hurt."

He does not hesitate. He follows the child down the row of bodies, turning corners and slipping in and out of alleyways, until he arrives by the side of a youth. He recognises Eponine at once, even though she is dressed in oversized and tattered men's clothes. When he last saw her, she was a plump girl, only six years of age, with glowing dark skin and curly hair that cascaded across her shoulders. 

Now, she hides her hair under a hat, and her clothes conceal a stick-thin frame. A bandage is tied clumsily around her, the work of a child desperate and unexperienced. Valjean knows at once that she is on the brink of death. Her face is pallid and drawn, her eyes fluttering with pain and fever. The boy—her brother, though he does not recall the Thenardiers having a son—looks at him gravely. He is wounded too, but not as badly as his sister.

Valjean looks from the brother to the sister. He thinks of the bodies in the street.

He cannot let another child die today.

\--

If the sewers of Paris could talk, they would speak not in any human language, but in the harsh roar of the waters, the stench of waste, and the history that sags and sleeps in its stone. This language of the Earth, it is a language that can be learnt. And if you converse with the sewers in its tongue, it will tell you unspeakable things. An example: the occurrences of 6th June 1832. 

The men and children who wandered the sewers were begrimed and bloodstained and filthy, that type of filthy that can never quite be washed away. The three were unrecognisable to all but God, and Thenardier was as far from God as man could be. He only saw three figures in the dim light, one small, one larger, and one draped over the larger one's shoulder, unconscious, dead, probably. Thenardier paid no attention to the small one. Children were of little worth to him, especially children who were not profitable. He turned his attention to the larger figure instead, and immediately understood what its intentions were. The figure was a murderer! Of course! 

Thenardier began to plot a clever trick in his mind, one that would surely bring him money untold. "I suppose there's no way to get out of here, is there?" he inquired, in his most friendly and jovial tones, and produced a large key. "You wouldn't have killed a man without looking in his pockets, of course. Give me half of your loot and I'll unlock the door." The murderer stayed silent, but the small figure turned, stepping into the light.

Thenardier was about to glimpse the child's face when a hand shot forward to restrain them, and a palm covered their mouth. A whisper into the child's ear, and they were convinced to return to the darkness. Perhaps this was the murderer's accomplice, and their identity was to be kept anonymous? 

Thenardier was not terribly surprised by this occurrence. He was no stranger to exposing children to crime. The murderer searched his pockets, and came up with but a few five-franc pieces. "You don't kill for much," said Thenardier, "but I'll take all that money. You'd better leave now."

He turned the key in the lock, and the gate slid open without a sound. The murderer affixed him with something resembling a stare. "Do you have family?" he asked. Thenardier, taken aback, blurted the first thing that came to mind. "I only have one daughter. The rest are dead to me." 

The murderer nodded, and before Thenardier could react, the three figures stole through the door and vanished in the darkness. He glanced past the bars, looking out into nothingness, but there was no sign of them.

Somewhere in the entrails of the monster, a boy swore at the man who used to be his father. 

\--

It is an exceedingly awkward carriage ride. He would have been proud.

Valjean sits, a hand protectively around the boy's—he calls himself Gavroche—shoulders. He takes frequent glances to the back of the carriage where Eponine sleeps, breathing in shallow gasps. Javert is seated facing him, and he stares fervently at a point just above Valjean's head, refusing to make eye contact.

Valjean tightens his grip on Gavroche's shoulders. He will be sentenced again, he knows. Where will these children go? The streets? The grave? On Gavroche's face he sees, superimposed, the image of the young Lark, the girl he raised like a daughter. Her gaze meets his, across the years, a old man and a girl. 

Cosette smiles, and for Cosette, read the children of Thenardier—but they are not his children, not anymore. Thenardier does not wish to claim them, and now the city of Paris will become their guardian, holding them in the sweeping and bloody bosom of the lowest, most wretched layers of its society.

Or—

The house is large. There is more than enough space to fit three children.

And he is sure Cosette will not mind the company. It will be good for her, after all. 

\--

Death is a white ceiling.

A soft mattress, the scent of flowers and herbs, the patter of rain outside. Eponine wonders if this is heaven. A second later, she rejects the possibility. She couldn't have gone to heaven. She doesn't deserve it.

The pain hits, then, and it takes her off-guard. It is a sharp, burning thing, originating from her chest and creeping down to her arm. The rest of the details come into clarity soon enough. The dryness of her throat. The stitches on her hand. The memories. The barricade. The blinding light. The blood. The blood. His blood.

The pain is a confirmation that she lives, but she finds she cannot muster the joy that comes with survival. 

"You're finally awake!"

A girl sits across from Eponine, a young lady with dark, small eyes and black hair which escapes from her bun to fall freely about her face. She puts her knitting away, smiles, and she's saying something, but Eponine's not paying attention because:

It's Cosette.

\--

Though it is not directly linked to the tale we are about to tell, the author would like to take a few words to describe funerary practices in 19th century France. We will need an example, of course, so we will examine the funeral of a young man who belonged to a bourgeoisie, royalist family. This young man is mildly extraordinary in the fact that he was estranged from his family before death, but his funeral will still serve as an appropriate reference. 

On the day of the funeral, the house was draped in black. Traditionally, the people of the house spoke in whispers. The deceased's grandfather, however, wept loud and long, and rambled for hours and hours on end. When the hearse was taken out, the family traveled behind it on foot, and the deceased's ghost followed, shy and lagging behind at the end of the line. The night was dark and deep. The bloodstains in the Cafe Musain had not yet dried.

This was all the ghost could see before he drifted away from the funeral, and headed in the opposite direction towards the house of Cosette Fauchevelent.


End file.
